The Increasing Role of Geoeconomics: Competition between the Chabahar and the Gwadar Ports

The Increasing Role of Geoeconomics: Competition between the Chabahar and the Gwadar Ports
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As an American scholar, Joseph Nye argues that we witness a global transition and power diffusion in many dimensions of the global political economy. This transition, which is currently underway, is being driven by many factors such as: technological developments, demographic shifts, migration waves, new alignments among Asian countries, changing market structures, demands of key economic and financial actors, and others. All these transitions and transformations are accompanied by the gradually changing world order and power configurations. This analysis focuses on two of the most important new trends: geo-economics and regionalization processes. While the concept of geopolitics has a connotation with historical imperialistic policies, geo-economics denotes integration with networks, connections, and transborder ties. It focuses on economic space, transportation connectivity, networks, and economic strengths. Moreover, with the traditional geopolitical models of Mackinder, Spykman, and Mahan point out to hegemonic politics around a Eurasian landmass and big oceans. The Indian Ocean is one of Nicholas Spykman’s ‘‘maritime highways of the world,’’ mainly an area for strategic competition, because of its geographic importance as being a pathway for the global movement of resources. On the other hand, Sir Halford Mackinder’s seminal contribution to classic geopolitics was based upon the transformative effects of railway routes.

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